I sit on my camping stool, the drawing board unfolded in front of me, the paper pinned down. I put pen to paper. And then I look at the city, and the city looks back.
That may sound esoteric. But I mean it exactly like that.
When I arrive in a new city, I have no plan. No composition researched in advance, no photos as reference, no sketch I clean up at home later. I don’t know what will end up on the paper. That isn’t naivety — it’s principle.
Because as soon as you start planning, your head takes over. You become rational. You decide in advance what matters. But the city has its own opinion. It leads you if you let it. It guides your eye, sends you down streets you would never have found, shows you corners that aren’t in any guidebook.
For me it’s two beings getting to know each other: me, little Heiner, and the big city. I can’t control it, I can only look and draw what it shows me. Step by step. Line by line.
That’s the difference from the studio. At home everything is controlled: light, temperature, time. You can pause, correct, start over. On the street you have none of that — and that’s exactly why the drawings are different. More alive. More real. Imperfect in a way you can’t fake.
It started in 2015, in the middle of my studies. I had just finished a project I had poured an incredible amount of energy into — a silk scarf collection, printed in seven colours. It didn’t work the way I wanted. The scarves were elaborate, expensive, complicated.
So I rethought everything. I come from graffiti; I always wanted to be out in public. Not sitting in a quiet studio, but taking my art to the people. The street was the logical answer.
One more reason I rarely talk about: I’m a one-man business. I do everything alone — and sometimes that’s really lonely. On the street I’m among people. They stop, watch, talk to me. That’s my way out of isolation. The street is my studio, my network and my sales channel at the same time.
“Out of the quiet studio, towards the people. The street is my studio, my network and my sales channel — all in one.”
Since then, ten years and fifteen cities have passed. London, Paris, Hanoi, Seoul, Basel, Brussels, Valencia, New York — every city has its own character, its own energy. And each one taught me something different. What began as an experiment has become my way of working.
In the coming weeks I’ll tell you more here: how I got from graffiti to drawing cities. Why I only work in black and white with pen and ink. Which tools I carry. And about the people I meet on the street — the big moments and the small ones.
The studio is safe. But the street is real. And that’s where I’ll stay.
— Heiner